» Wed Oct 20, 2010 12:50 am Back in 2005, Monica Gaudio wrote a nice piece about apple pie recipes for a medieval cookery enthusiast blog. Five years later, her post appeared nearly verbatim—without compensation or permission—in Cooks Source magazine. And then it got worse.
Assuming an honest mistake had been made, Gaudio reached out to Cooks Source—a non-profit publication with a listed circulation of 17,000-28,000 readers—asking first for clarification, then for compensation (in the form of a $130 donation to Columbia J-School) and a printed apology. Instead, she got this response from Cooks Source managing editor Judith Griggs:
Assuming an honest mistake had been made, Gaudio reached out to Cooks Source—a non-profit publication with a listed circulation of 17,000-28,000 readers—asking first for clarification, then for compensation (in the form of a $130 donation to Columbia J-School) and a printed apology. Instead, she got this response from Cooks Source managing editor Judith Griggs:
But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence [sic] and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.
I came across http://gizmodo.com/5681714/attention-the-web-is-not-public-domain on Gizmodo and I'm speechless, I have no idea what was going through Judith Griggs' head when she wrote that reply but she couldn't have been more wrong. I don't know why on earth she thinks that the web is 'public domain' :confused:
I'm posting this because I think that Judith's view on the web (as public domain) is far too common. People are used to copying and saving files and resources online without asking anyone and without giving the authors due credit.
I think this is also quite relevant on these forums because this topic has been going on in the modding community for a while now, where 'developers' take the work of other people and publish it as their own, and most of the time, they get away with it. :nope:
So what are your thoughts on this?
